1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for specifying a desired function of an information processing apparatus through a wireless communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, office equipments, such as printers, have been used in such a manner that a plurality of the office equipments are connected to one another via a network such that a client terminal, such as a personal computer (PC), connected to the same network can specify a desired one of the office equipments to print document and the like.
Multifunction peripherals (MFPs) having a copy function, a facsimile (FAX) function, a printer function, and a scanner function in one package have also been used in the same manner. In case of the MFP, a user is allowed to specify various setting information to thereby determine whether to perform stapling, punching, and the like.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-200887 discloses a technology for establishing a connection between apparatuses by using a contactless integrated circuit (IC) tag. More particularly, a user is allowed to intuitively establish a connection to a target apparatus to be used for printing a document or the like by moving an intermediate terminal to the target apparatus.
However, in the technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-200887, the intermediate terminal can transmit only connection setting information to the target apparatus. Therefore, a user is not allowed to specify functional information for printing (e.g., a type of print color (color or monochrome), availability of 2-sided printing, an available print sheet size, and the like).